The three-hour superhero movie has become the norm, but does runtime actually serve the story or just the studio's need to justify higher ticket prices? I sat through a 2h50m cut last week where the entire middle act could have been trimmed without losing a single character beat. Meanwhile, a tight 90-minute thriller from the '70s kept me on edge from start to finish. Short films prove that constraint breeds creativity, so why do we keep rewarding bloat at the box office?